Penn State prosecutor has Lackawanna ties

The lawyer leading the state attorney general's office case against two university officials in the Penn State child sex-abuse case is a former local high school basketball star who earned top ratings as a homicide prosecutor in Allegheny County.

Deputy State Attorney General Bruce R. Beemer, 43, a 1986 Abington Heights graduate, is handling the case against former athletic director Tim Curley and former senior vice president Gary Schultz. They are accused of lying to a statewide grand jury investigating alleged sex abuse by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Citing legal ethics rules, Beemer declined to discuss specifics of the prosecution, but acknowledged the publicity of the case is unlike any he experienced, even in prosecuting high-profile murder cases.

"In terms of media attention, I would say this is unique," Beemer said in an interview Friday from his Pittsburgh office. "I think everybody knew â¦ there would be a lot of interest generated by the circumstances surrounding it. Certainly, I've prosecuted capital murder cases where people lives are at stake on both sides. â¦ You hope the experience that you gain from those kinds of cases will prepare you for anything that you have to do in a courtroom."

Curley and Schultz are charged with failing to report sexual abuse by Sandusky to the proper authorities and lying to a grand jury to cover up their inaction. They vehemently deny the charges, but Beemer won the first step in the case earlier this month. He convinced a magisterial district judge in Harrisburg that there is enough evidence to warrant a trial in Dauphin County Court. A different prosecutor is handling the prosecution of Sandusky, who is accused of the actual sexual abuse.

Beemer, the son of attorney Barry Beemer and the late attorney Diane F. Beemer, was an all-star basketball player for Abington Heights. He was captain of the Comets' 1986 Lackawanna League championship team. He enrolled at the College of William & Mary, but transferred to the University of Scranton where he played basketball under coaching legend Bob Bessoir. He earned a bachelor's degree there in 1992 in history and political science.

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1995, Beemer spent 14 years as a deputy in the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office.

"I was, even when I was in law school, sort of drawn to the prosecutorial angle and was lucky enough to land a job out there and really stayed for a long time because I really enjoyed the work, enjoyed working with victims and victims' families and trying to achieve a correct result in cases," he said.

Some of his caseload involved sexual abuse, so he is not unfamiliar with such cases.

When he left in May 2010 for private practice, he told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review he had tried almost 500 cases, many of them murder cases.

"He's one of the finest trial lawyers to come through this office," Deputy District Attorney Mark Tranquilli, the head of the homicide unit, told The Tribune-Review. "He gets good results in tough cases."

Allegheny County Court Judge David R. Cashman told the newspaper Beemer is "bright, well-prepared, articulate and, more than anything else, he has a good heart."

"He does the right thing," the judge said.

In 2009, Beemer's name emerged as a contender for U.S. attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania, but another lawyer got the job. Then in September of this year, with Beemer operating a Pittsburgh office of his father's law firm, Attorney General Linda Kelly asked him to be her chief of staff. He started the job in September only two months before the Penn State case broke.

Kelly and he got to know each other through work on various legal task forces over the years, he said.

Beemer declined to comment on the pace of the attorney general's investigation, which has been the subject of some controversy, but said he has confidence in his case.

"That was before my time in the office. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on it," he said. "We would not be bringing any prosecution in this matter if we were not confident in the evidence."

Beemer and his wife, Jodi, live in the suburban Pittsburgh borough, Bradford Woods. They have a son, Jackson, 4, and a daughter, Jordan, 2.

bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com

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